They are now using their power to pervert an open standard, one that was designed to be open and free to further innovation and competition, to force developers and manufacturers to pay to use that open standard on products that Apple develops.

That is fine in and of itself. But they should not be allowed to use the Bluetooth logo and they should not be able to call themselves or their products compliant to the standard.

I see your points. I was railing against the binary wars mentality (Apple vs PC, Democrats vs Republicans) that people (society, nobody here in particular) are playing into and dumbing down our society. Each side of a coin has something to offer... moreover, there aren't only two sides to a coin, but I guess thinking that there are makes it easier for consumption and discussion.

I looked up the MAP specification and found it interesting that Apple was not a contributor but other phone manufacturers were. Not that it makes it okay to deviate and use the name, but it is interesting nonetheless.

More interesting would be to know how it is "non-standard"... did they use a different set of XML tags in the bmessage or what? With MFT 3.51 we can now get text notifications, but can't send, so sounds close....